


growing pains

by Maiden_of_the_Moon



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beholding Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kidfic- But Make it Eldritch, Lonely Avatar Martin Blackwood, M/M, No beta we kayak like Tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_the_Moon/pseuds/Maiden_of_the_Moon
Summary: On Saturday, their daughter has a migraine.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 99





	growing pains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ravenesta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenesta/gifts).
  * Inspired by [as in a mirror, dimly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22646545) by [Ravenesta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenesta/pseuds/Ravenesta). 



> Disclaimer: Nope. 
> 
> Author’s Note: “as in a mirror, dimly” ruined me a little bit. So now I’m gonna ruin _it_ a little bit. I think that’s fair? Yeah? No? Well. I’mma do it anyway. 
> 
> Warnings: Eldritch kidfic. Obligatory reference to "The Mechanisms." Significant Capitalizations. No beta.

\---

growing pains

\---

( _saturday_ )

The world is old, and She is new, and there is much She does not know. 

So much. Too much. 

In the garden, Papa plucks a cucumber, dew-dappled and impossibly green. She does not see nor See him do so, as Daddy had tied a thick cloth around Her head, but from Her booster seat in the cottage kitchen, She can hear the umbilical _snap_ of the vine and senses— somewhere— the twitching of black roots.

-

( _monday_ )

“ _’Cause space is—?_ ”

“’ast!” 

“ _And you are—?_ ”

“S’mal!” 

“ _It’s black and bitter cold_ ,” Daddy sings, their bedtime dance around Her room taking them past Her shelf. Like he always does, Daddy Knows what story She wants to hear, tonight; he pauses just long enough to pass Her the desired Grimms’ collection before twirling Her over to the rocking chair. “ _The book is lying open— there are tales to be told._ ”

-

( _tuesday_ )

“Oh— looks like you’re not the only aspiring engineer in the park today, sweetheart,” Papa says, pointing towards the sandbox. There are children there already, little boys and little girls and little ones who have not yet realized that they are the opposite or neither or both. Together, they are building a castle out of pails and shovels, out of sticks and pebbles and leaves. “Shall we go make friends?”

She Looks at them individually before shaking Her head. Her grip on Papa’s trouser leg tightens, palms probably leaving sweat-stains. 

Papa, She is Aware, is not as bad at social interactions as Daddy, but He still struggles, sometimes, not to panic when neighbors say more than “hello” on the street. These feelings that surge inside Her now— rising anxiety, effervescent nerves, emotions that fill the lungs and make it difficult to breathe— fall within Papa’s domain, and Papa understands. 

But understanding is not the same thing as acceptance. 

“Why not?” Papa asks, ceaselessly gentle, like fog rolling off the coast. “They seem nice.” 

They do. 

“One of them is wearing a My Little Pony shirt. Do you see?” 

She does. 

“Are you scared?” 

Yes. No. The words elude Her, and rationality fails. If there is nothing to fear but fear itself, what is Fear afraid of? The lack thereof? Its own annihilation? Life is full of contradictions, and She is self-aware enough at age three to realize She personifies one of those great paradoxes: Love and Existential Horror laced together from incongruous bits of DNA and eldritch ichor. She is, at least in part, Papa’s Loneliness incarnate, and embodies it as absolutely as She does Her own intrinsic desire for human connection. Each half of Her is terrified of the other. They are oil and water. 

Her thoughts drift to the Forsaken sea. 

“Oh, sweetheart.” 

Papa does not Know things. Not like Daddy. But Papa knows a lot. He knows enough. So when he sighs like the tide and kneels in the grass to kiss Her brow, She does not feel patronized. Papa _understands_.

And because Papa understands, he wants better for Her. 

“What if,” he tries again, his smile lopsided, his fingers curling around Hers, “I promise to stay with you the entire time? What if I hold your hand until you tell me to stop?”

She considers this. Bites, gingerly, at Papa’s thumb. 

When he does not let go, She leads him to the sandbox.

-

( _wednesday_ )

“You should be ashamed, talking to her like that,” comments _Siobhan Buchanan, age 67, mother of three, though only her most conservative child continues to speak to her after her most recent, politically-charged Facebook rant, and only then because they hope to remain in her will. Siobhan’s lungs aren’t what they used to be, though her smoking habit is as it has always been._

Daddy blinks slowly. Bemusedly. He had been mid-gesticulation, holding aloft a package of mass-produced naan, but returns the bread to the shelf after his harangue about maida and atta flour is interrupted. The toddler, safely in the trolley’s seat and suckling on a sippy cup, blithely continues to mirror Her Daddy; as one, their attention turns.

Between them, they have many eyes. 

They have many, many eyes.

“…I beg your pardon?” Daddy says, polite. He always sounds coldest when he is being polite. Cold the way that truth is. 

Unperturbed, _Siobhan Buchanan, widower, who decided months before her husband died that he didn’t actually_ need _those expensive pain pills, not anymore, and really, what an easy way to save extra money— something he should be glad she had thought to do, since he knows she has no desire to get a job at her age_ , clarifies: “That language. It’s entirely inappropriate.” _Siobhan Buchanan, mostly-reformed shoplifter_ , motions with the hand that is not holding a loaf of enriched white bread. “You called her a _cow_ , for God’s sake.”

Daddy bristles. This is less fun to imitate. That She and Daddy frown simultaneously is a coincidence. “I called Her _Poddy_ , ma’am, which is an endearment I need not explain to a stranger.” 

“How’s she to know that, then? And what about all those other confusing words you were throwing at her— _alloxan_ , and _xanthophyll oxidation_ , and whatnot? _Endosperm_ was just indecent, by the way. She’s yet a bairn! How are you ever going to connect with the wee thing if she has no idea what you’re saying, or whether or not you’re insulting her?” 

“Baby birds can only regurgitate what they’re fed,” Daddy counters, dabbing a driblet of mango juice from the corner of Her pouting mouth. “Children, likewise, can only learn from the information with which they are presented. I offer my daughter a buffet; from that, it is Her choice to consume what She will.” 

“What a revolting way to phrase your argument,” grimaces _Siobhan Buchanan, who just yesterday nipped a package off of her neighbor’s stoop, because the Walshs’ get a ludicrous number of subscription boxes— upwards of five a month!— and it is unfair that they should be able to afford an excess of little luxuries when_ she _can barely keep up with the monthly payments on her new Prius._ “You new-age parents baffle me, honestly… Why, look at your babe’s face! She looks plain lost, the poor dear. I bet you don’t understand any of this, do you, lovie?” 

Upon being addressed, the toddler cocks Her head. Swallows Her juice.

“Da’dy,” She coos, leaning into Daddy’s chest, as their many, many, _many_ eyes gleam with a matching, preternatural chatoyance, “do y’u wanna know wha’ _pen-sin fur-aud_ is?”

 _Siobhan Buchanan, committer of pension fraud_ freezes, face suddenly as white as the bread she has crushed in her grip. Without another word, she turns, collects her purse, and abandons both her cart and the conversation she had started. 

Daddy smiles. His smile is not normally lopsided, not like Papa’s, but it does look rather wonky right now, on account of how hard he is struggling to suppress his amusement. 

“You know better than to do that,” Daddy scolds. Attempts to scold. Daddy isn’t very good at scolding anymore, Papa has said, and She tends to agree. 

And so, unbothered, She finishes Her juice. “ _Siobhan Buchanan_ knows be’er, too, Da’dy.”

Daddy cannot argue with that. Wisely, he chooses not to try.

-

( _thursday_ )

“Today’s art project,” Papa announces, setting a box of markers and one of Daddy’s used-up statements before Her, “is Black Out Poetry.”

-

( _friday_ )

It is hard to play hide-and-seek with Papa, because he hides too well. 

It is hard to play hide-and-seek with Daddy, because he seeks too well. 

But it is easy to play hide-and-seek with both Papa _and_ Daddy. When both Papa _and_ Daddy play, they exert so much energy trying to out-do the other, uncanny statistics tend to shift in Her favor. Today, She stands a solid chance at winning with only the most tertiary of efforts. 

It is a Revelation that sees Her gleeful, giggling; She scampers into the garden, passing the yellow-painted door that sometimes-is-and-sometimes-isn’t there, before rounding the fence and the cottage’s brickwork face. Her goal: the most overgrown of Papa’s mulberry bushes. Once reached, ever-meticulous, She shuffles Herself into its brambles, ensuring that the leaves conceal Her shoes. 

“Shhh,” She whispers to the spider that She finds woven between berries and branches, “dun’ tell.” 

The spider does not.

-

( _saturday_ )

The world is old, and She is new, and there is much She does not know. 

So much. Too much. 

Papa has brought the cucumber in from the garden, and is paring it into pieces on the cutting board— is cleaving new wounds into old wood. Gouging further lines into knots that look like eyes. There is a silvery, shivery quality to the sound of the knife when it is in Papa’s fist: a resonance that is never there when Daddy uses it. 

_Cut ties. Isolation. Dream logic_ , She Knows, even with the blindfold on, and the Knowing hurts in ways that a blade never could.

“Let’s lie down, Poddy,” Daddy coaxes, and She lifts Her arms in acquiescence. Her booster seat crests a vastness from which She cannot jump. Not when blindfolded. There is something ironic about this— about being stopped by the Nietzschean abyss behind Her own eyelids— but She loses sight of the thread as easily as one might spider silk. 

_Obols_ , She is instead abruptly Informed about. Daddy is lowering them both atop the tea-stained sofa. _Coins placed on the eyes of the departed._ Ancient framework groans as he lays Her head upon his lap, as he pets Her hair and releases the bow of Her blindfold. It slips away, unnoticed, in the way of missing moments. In the manner of lost souls. _Obols were used to pay the psychopomp Charon for passage to the underworld._

Round, chilled, damp with death. She whimpers when the first cucumber slice is placed over Her eye, and Papa’s large, soft hand slides from Her temple to Her chin. 

“Hush, sweetheart,” he soothes, brushing away a tear. “This will help. I promise.” 

“You’ll feel better soon,” Daddy assures, setting the second slice. Liquified viscera bleeds down Her cheek, the cucumber’s fleshy mesocarp almost-unbearably cold against the thinness of Her eyelids. When those disks become almost-unbearably warm, Daddy and Papa pluck them from Her face to eat like communion wafers before they begin the process again. 

And again.

And again—

-

( _sunday_ )

…until, finally, the pain goes away.

\---


End file.
